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QQQ and tech ETFs are leading the surge off the April low, but there is another group leading year-to-date. Year-to-date performance is important because it includes two big events: the stock market decline from mid February to early April and the steep surge into early June. We need to combine these two events for a complete performance picture.

TrendInvestorPro uses a Core ETF ChartList to track performance and rank momentum. This list includes 59 equity ETFs, 4 bond ETFs, 9 commodity ETFs and 2 crypto ETFs. The image below shows the top 10 performers year-to-date (%Chg). Seven of the top ten are metals-related ETFs. Gold Miners (GDX), Silver Miners (SIL), Platinum (PLTM) and Gold (GLD) are leading the way. The Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA), Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) are the only three non-commodity leaders. The message here is clear: metals are leading.

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TrendInvestorPro has been tracking the Platinum ETF (PLTM) and Palladium ETF (PALL) since their big breakout surges on May 20th. The chart below shows PALL with a higher low from August to April and a breakout on May 20th. The ETF fell back below the 200-day SMA (gray line) in late May, but resumed its breakout with a 7.75% surge this week.

The bottom window shows the PPO(5,200,0) moving above +1% on May 21st to signal an uptrend in late May. This signal filter means the 5-day EMA is more than 1% above the 200-day EMA. The uptrend signal remains valid until a cross below -1% (pink line). As with all trend-following signals, there are bad signals (whipsaws) and good signals (extended trends). Given overall strength in metals, this could be a good signal that foreshadows an extended uptrend.

TrendInvestorPro is following this signal, as well as breakouts in other commodity-related ETFs. Our comprehensive reports and videos focus on the leaders. This week we covered flags and pennants in several tech ETFs (XLK, IGV, SMH, ARKF, AIQ, MAGS). Click there to take a trial and get your four bonuses. 

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The body of a Thai hostage, Nattapong Pinta, who was abducted alive during the October 7 attacks was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday, according to a statement from the Israeli military and the Shin Bet security service.

The announcement comes just days after Israel recovered the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages from Gaza.

Pinta, 35, was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel where he had been working in agriculture, according to an Israeli military official, who said it is estimated that he was killed during the first months of captivity. Pinta was a husband and father working in Israel to support his family in Thailand, the official said.

“We will not rest until all the hostages, living and deceased, are returned home,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Pinta was abducted by the Mujahideen, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, a militant group that took part in the Hamas-led October 7 terror attack on Israel. The IDF said it is the same organization that kidnapped the Bibas family and killed Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, the mother and two young sons who became the most prominent among Hamas’ captives.

Earlier this week, Israel announced that the bodies of Judy Winston-Haggai, 70, and Gadi Haggai, 72, were recovered from southern Gaza. The two were also taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The couple had four children and seven grandchildren.

The retrieval of Pinta’s body comes with an intense Israeli operation underway in Gaza, with the Civil Defense reporting at least 38 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Friday.

The IDF said four soldiers were killed and five wounded early Friday morning when an explosive was detonated in a building in Khan Younis in which they were operating, causing part of the structure to collapse.

A total of 55 hostages remain in Gaza, including one taken in 2014. Twenty are believed to still be alive.

Of the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas militants on October 7, many were migrant workers from poor rural parts of Asia, who had gone to work in Israel’s agricultural, construction and health care sectors to send money back home.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Four people were killed in an “extremely violent” blaze seemingly caused by a battery-powered electric scooter that tore through a 10-story housing block in Reims, the capital of France’s Champagne region, authorities said Saturday.

A 13-year-old jumped to his death from the 4th floor apartment where the fire started in the early hours of Friday and a burned body found inside is believed to be that of his older brother, aged 15, said Reims prosecutor François Schneider.

An 87-year-old woman and her 59-year-old son who lived on the 8th floor suffocated to death in the smoke, he said.

Two people were seriously injured, including the dead boys’ stepfather who was badly burned, and 26 others were treated in hospital for lighter injuries, he said.

Schneider said there is “no doubt” that the blaze was accidental, spreading quickly from the scooter that caught fire for reasons unknown.

Battery fires “are extremely difficult to extinguish” and fire officers battled the blaze for more than three hours, the prosecutor said.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

A planned exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war failed to take place on Saturday, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of postponing the swap at the last minute, something Ukrainian officials dismissed as “dirty games” from the Kremlin.

Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers, leaving more than 1,200 frozen Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an exchange point with no one to collect them.

Ukraine rejected Russia’s account of the events, saying that the two sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of soldiers’ bodies.

During a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this week that the exchange would be the largest since of the three-year war.

“In strict accordance with the Istanbul agreements, the Russian side began a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen,” as well as badly wounded soldiers under the age of 25, Medinsky said Saturday afternoon on Telegram.

He claimed that 1,212 bodies of killed Ukrainian soldiers were at the exchange point, with the rest “on their way.” He also said that Russia gave Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war for exchange, listed as “wounded, seriously ill and young people,” in order to start the swap.

In a video posted by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Telegram, two men wearing hazmat suits are seen opening the doors to the back of a truck parked on the side of a road. Inside the truck were dozens of sealed white bags, which the ministry said contained the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

Medinsky said Russia’s Defense Ministry contact group was waiting at the border with Ukraine, but alleged that Kyiv had “unexpectedly postponed the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period” and had given “pretty weird reasons” for doing so.

Ukraine swiftly rejected the accusations, saying Medinsky’s claims “do not correspond to reality.” It said the exchange of prisoners of war and soldiers’ bodies were separate processes.

“Unfortunately, instead of constructive dialogue, we are again faced with manipulations and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian issues for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.

“We call on the Russian side to stop playing dirty games,” it added.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia was creating “artificial obstacles” and making “false statements” to obstruct the exchange of living prisoners, reneging on what had been agreed in Istanbul.

“The Ukrainian side has faced yet another attempt to renege on the agreements after the fact,” the ministry said.

Although prisoner of war swaps had been a rare point of agreement between the warring countries, the unraveling of Saturday’s scheduled exchange underscores the lack of trust that has so far marred the peace talks.

The spat came soon after Russia launched another aerial assault on Ukraine, killing three people in the city of Kharkiv.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

They know all about glory days on the Kop – the fabled terrace that is the spiritual home of fans of Liverpool – England’s Premier League champions.

But they’re more used to legends like Kenny Dalglish or Mohamed Salah banging in goals than political cries for help. So, it was surreal to watch alongside thousands of middle-aged Brits as Bruce Springsteen bemoaned America’s democracy crisis on hallowed footballing ground.

“The America that I love … a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” administration, Springsteen said at Anfield Stadium on Wednesday night.

The Boss’s latest warnings of authoritarianism on his European tour were impassioned and drew large cheers. But they did seem to go over the heads of some fans who don’t live in the whirl of tension constantly rattling America’s national psyche.

Liverpudlians waited for decades for Springsteen to play the hometown of The Beatles, whose “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” set his life’s course when he heard it on the radio as a youngster in New Jersey.

Most had a H-H-H-Hungry heart for a party. They got a hell of a show. But also, a lesson on US civics.

“Tonight, we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!” Springsteen said.

His European odyssey is unfolding as Western democracies are being shaken again by right-wing populism. So, his determination to engage with searing commentary therefore raises several questions.

What is the role of artists in what Springsteen calls “dangerous times?” Can they make a difference, or should stars of entertainment and sports avoid politics and stick to what they know? Fox News polemicist Laura Ingraham once told basketball icon LeBron James, for instance, that he should just “shut up and dribble.”

Springsteen’s gritty paeans to steel towns and down-on-their-luck cities made him a working-class balladeer. But as blue-collar voters stampede to the right, does he really speak for them now?

Then there’s this issue that Springsteen emphatically tried to answer in Liverpool this week: Does the rough but noble America he’s been mythologizing for 50 years even exist anymore?

How Springsteen and Trump mine the same societal ground

Trump certainly wants to bring the arts to heel – given his social media threats to “highly overrated” Springsteen, Taylor Swift and other superstars and his takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Any center of liberal and free thought from pop music to Ivy League universities is vulnerable to authoritarian impulses.

But it’s also true that celebrities often bore with their trendy political views, especially preaching at Hollywood awards ceremonies. Springsteen, however, has been penning social commentary for decades. And what’s the point of rock ’n’ roll if not rebellion? Rockers usually revolt in their wild-haired youth, rather than in their mid-70s, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Oddly, given their transatlantic dialogue of recent weeks, Trump and Springsteen mine the same political terrain – globalization’s economic and spiritual hollowing of industrial heartlands.

“Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows, And vacant stores, Seems like there ain’t nobody, Wants to come down here no more,” Springsteen sang in 1984 in “My Hometown” long before Trump set his sights on the Oval Office.

The White House sometimes hits similar notes, though neither the Boss nor Trump would welcome the comparison. “The main street in my small town, looks a heck of a lot worse than it probably did decades ago before I was alive,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said rather less poetically in March.

Political fault lines are also shifting. In the US and Europe, the working class is rejecting the politics of hope and optimism in dark times.

And the Democratic politicians that Springsteen supported – like defeated 2004 nominee John Kerry, who borrowed Springsteen’s “No Surrender” as his campaign anthem, and former President Barack Obama – failed to mend industrial blight that acted as a catalyst to Trumpism.

Shifting political landscapes in England and the US

There are warning signs in England too. The Boss’s UK tours often coincided with political hinge moments. In the 1970s he found synergy with the smoky industrial cities of the North. In his “Born in the USA” period, he sided with miners clashing with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A new BBC documentary revealed this week he gave $20,000 in the 1980s to a strikers’ support group.

Liverpool, a soulful, earthy city right out of the Springsteen oeuvre is a longtime Labour Party heartland. But in a recent by-election, Nigel Farage’s populist, pro-Trump, Reform Party overturned a Labour majority of nearly 15,000 in Runcorn, a decayed industrial town, 15 miles upstream from Liverpool on the River Mersey. This stunner showed Labour’s working class “red wall” is in deep peril and could follow US states like Ohio in shifting to the right as workers reject progressives.

Labour Cabinet Minister Lisa Nandy, whose Wigan constituency is nearby, warned in an interview with the New Statesman magazine this month that political tensions were reaching a breaking point in the North.

“People have watched their town centers falling apart, their life has got harder over the last decade and a half … I don’t remember a time when people worked this hard and had so little to show for it,” Nandy said, painting a picture that will be familiar to many Americans.

In another sign of a seismic shift in British politics last week, Reform came a close third in an unprecedented result in a parliamentary by-election in a one-time industrial heartland outside Glasgow. Scotland has so far been immune to the populist wave – but the times are changing.

Still, there’s not much evidence Trump or his populist cousins in the UK will meaningfully solve heartland pain. They’ve always been better at exploiting vulnerability than fixing it. And Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would hurt the poor by cutting access to Medicaid and nutrition help while handing the wealthy big tax cuts.

“When conditions in a country are ripe for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up,” Springsteen told the crowd in Liverpool, introducing “Rainmaker” a song about a conman who tells drought-afflicted farmers that “white’s black and black is white.” As the E Street Band struck up, Springsteen said: “This is for America’s dear leader.”

A battle for America’s soul

Springsteen has his “Land of Hope and Dreams.” But Trump has his new “Golden Age.” He claims he can “Make America Great Again” by attacking perceived bastions of liberal power like elite universities and the press, with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and by challenging due process.

Springsteen implicitly rejected this as un-American while in Liverpool, infusing extra meaning into the lyrics of “Long Walk Home,” a song that predates Trump’s first election win by a decade: “Your flag flyin’ over the courthouse, Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

Sending fans into a cool summer night, the Boss pleaded with them not to give up on his country.

“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years now is real, and regardless of its many faults, is a great country with a great people and we will survive this moment,” he said.

But his fight with Trump for America’s soul will go on. The contrast would be driven home more sharply to Americans if he tours on US soil at this, the most overtly politicized phase of a half-century-long career.

Perhaps in America’s 250th birthday year in 2026?

This post appeared first on cnn.com

The Israeli military says it has killed the leader of a Palestinian militant group that took part in the October 7, 2023, terror attacks on southern Israel.

Asaad Abu Sharia, who led the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its armed wing the Mujahideen Brigades, was killed in a joint operation with Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday.

His death and that of his brother Ahmed Abu Sharia were confirmed by the militant group hours after Gaza’s Civil Defense reported that an Israeli airstrike had hit their family home in the Sabra area of Gaza City.

Hamas run Al-Aqsa TV said the strike killed at least 15 people and injured several. Video showed people searching through the debris of a demolished four-story house.

The Mujahideen Brigades took part in the October 7 attacks alongside Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and took hostage some of the most high-profile captives, including a family whose suffering became a symbol of the attack.

According to the Israeli military, Sharia was among the militant leaders who stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where many residents were killed or taken hostage during the brutal terror assault that led to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Despite not being aware of Hamas’ plans in advance, fighters from the jihadist group joined in the cross-border assault “as an extension of the Hamas attack,” the Israeli military said.

According to Israel, Sharia was directly involved in the abduction and murders of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas – a family that became one of the most recognizable victims of the attack, partly because of the young ages of Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months and four years old respectively at the time.

Kfir was the youngest hostage kidnapped into Gaza and the youngest to have been killed. The boys’ mother, Shiri, was 32 at the time of her kidnap. Their father Yarden was also captured, but was released alive in February after 484 days in captivity.

Reacting to news of Sharia’s killing, the Bibas family expressed their “heartfelt gratitude” to the Israeli military, saying his death was “another step on the journey towards closure.”

“While Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir cannot be brought back, we find some measure of comfort knowing these despicable murderers will not harm another family,” the Bibas family said in a statement shared via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Israel’s military said Sharia was also involved in the abduction of the Israeli-American couple Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein Haggai and the abduction and killing of Thai national Nattapong Pinta.

The Israeli-American couple were killed near their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the attack in 2023. The body of Nattapong, an agricultural worker who was abducted alive on October 7, was recovered from southern Gaza in a military operation on Friday.

Israel said it believes the Mujahideen Brigades are still holding the body of an additional foreign national. The group has previously denied killing their captives.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Colombian senator Miguel Uribe, in the running to join next year’s presidential race, has been shot at an event in Bogota, according to national police.

The mayor of Bogota, Carlos Galán, said Uribe was receiving emergency care after being attacked in the Fontibon district on Saturday and that the “entire hospital network” of the Colombian capital was on alert in case he needed to be transferred.

The mayor added that the suspected attacker had been arrested.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro expressed his solidarity with the senator’s family in a tweet on X, saying, “I don’t know how to ease your pain. It is the pain of a mother lost, and of a wounded homeland.”

Colombia’s government has issued a statement condemning the attack on Uribe.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Procter & Gamble will cut 7,000 jobs, or roughly 15% of its non-manufacturing workforce, as part of a two-year restructuring program.

The layoffs by the consumer goods giant come as President Donald Trump’s tariffs have led a range of companies to hike prices to offset higher costs. The trade tensions have raised concerns about the broader health of the U.S. economy and job market.

P&G CFO Andre Schulten announced the job cuts during a presentation at the Deutsche Bank Consumer Conference on Thursday morning. The company employs 108,000 people worldwide, as of June 30, according to regulatory filings.

P&G faces slowing growth in the U.S., the company’s largest market. In its fiscal third quarter, North American organic sales rose just 1%.

Trump’s tariffs have presented another challenge for P&G, which has said that it plans to raise prices in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. The company expects a 3 cent to 4 cent per share drag on its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings from levies, based on current rates, Schulten said. Looking ahead to fiscal 2026, P&G is projecting a headwind from tariffs of $600 million before taxes.

P&G, which owns Pampers, Tide and Swiffer, is planning a broader effort to reevaluate its portfolio, restructure its supply chain and slim down its corporate organization. Schulten said investors can expect more details, like specific brand and market exits, on the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call in July.

P&G is projecting that it will incur non-core costs of $1 billion to $1.6 billion before taxes due to the reorganization.

“This restructuring program is an important step toward ensuring our ability to deliver our long-term algorithm over the coming two to three years,” Schulten said. “It does not, however, remove the near-term challenges that we currently face.”

P&G follows other major U.S. employers, including Microsoft and Starbucks, in carrying out significant layoffs this year. As Trump’s tariffs take hold, investors are watching Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report for May for signs of whether the job market has started to slow. While the government reading for April was better than expected, a separate reading this week from ADP showed private sector hiring was weak in May.

Shares of P&G fell more than 1% in morning trading on the news. The stock has fallen 2% so far this year, outstripped by the S&P 500′s gains of more than 1%. P&G has a market cap of $407 billion.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

President Donald Trump has escalated his sudden rupture with Elon Musk by implying the government could sever ties with the tech titan’s businesses.

‘The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it,’ Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.

Various estimates have been put forward about just how much Musk’s firms, primarily SpaceX and Tesla, benefit from U.S. government contracts and subsidies. The Washington Post has put the figure at $38 billion, with SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell estimating that company alone benefits from $22 billion in federal spending. Reuters has reported that the true figure is classified because of the nature of many of the contracts Musk’s firms are under.

NASA relies on SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The agency’s only other option at the moment is to pay around $90 million for a seat aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsule.

Last year, SpaceX was selected to develop a vehicle capable of safely de-orbiting the International Space Station in 2030, when NASA and its partner space agencies agreed to end operation of the orbiting laboratory. SpaceX is also expected to play a major role in NASA’s efforts to return astronauts to the moon and eventually travel beyond to Mars.

Later Thursday afternoon, Musk posted that he would begin ‘decommissioning’ SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which regularly flies astronauts and cargo to the ISS, in response to Trump’s threat.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said the agency ‘will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space.’

‘We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met,’ she said in a statement on X.

Tesla, meanwhile, has benefited from approximately $11.4 billion in total regulatory credits aimed at boosting electric-vehicle purchases, though that figure also includes state-level subsidies. Musk has claimed he no longer needs the credit, which he says now primarily benefits rivals.

Following Trump’s threat, shares in Tesla, which had already fallen 8% on Thursday as the tit-for-tat escalated on social media, declined as much as 15% following Trump’s post. SpaceX is privately held and its shares do not trade on the open market.

Trump’s warning came as part of a stunning exchange with Musk — who spent more than $250 million to help him get elected — that erupted into public view.

Earlier in the day, president told reporters in the Oval Office that he was disappointed in Musk’s criticism of the Republican policy bill that is making its way through Congress. Musk has blasted the bill, calling it a ‘disgusting abomination,’ amid concerns it would worsen the U.S. fiscal deficit.

Musk, who officially left his White House role last week to spend more time on his companies, spent much of Thursday launching into a tirade on X, his social media platform, where he posted a variety of critiques of Trump, the bill and other Republican politicians.

A make-good on Trump’s threat would come at a sensitive time for Tesla, which has seen global sales plunge partly in response to Musk’s very involvement with the Trump campaign. Year to date, its shares are down some 25%.

Trump’s warning also raises the specter that Trump could resurface pending government investigations into Musk’s firms. According to a report in April from Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Musk’s firms were facing $2.37 billion in potential federal liabilities when Trump took office in January.

Since then, many of those actions have been paused or outright dismissed alongside the rise of the previously Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency, which gutted many of the agencies looking into Musk’s businesses.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

A lot has happened in the stock market since Liberation Day, keeping us on our toes. Volatility has declined significantly, stocks have bounced back from their April 7 low, and the economy has remained resilient.

If you’re still feeling uncertain, though, you’re not alone. The stock market’s in a bit of a “wait and see” mode, going through a period of consolidation as it figures out its next move. 

The S&P 500 ($SPX) is hesitating to hit 6000 despite reclaiming its 200-day simple moving average (SMA). This indecision can leave investors feeling stuck in “no man’s land.” And it’s not just the S&P 500, either; most major indexes are in a similar scenario, except for small caps, which have been left behind. This could be because the market has priced in a delay in interest rate cut expectations.

Tech Is Taking the Lead

If you drill down into the major indexes, there is some action you shouldn’t ignore. Tech stocks have started to take the lead again, although momentum has been lacking. Over the past month, the Technology sector has been up over 4%.

FIGURE 1. S&P SECTOR ETF PERFORMANCE OVER THE LAST 30 DAYS. Technology is the clear leader with a gain of over 4%.Image source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes. It’s encouraging to see tech stocks regain their leadership position. Tech is a major force behind the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ($COMPQ). The daily chart of the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) shows the ETF has been trying to break above a consolidation range it has been stuck in since mid-May.

FIGURE 2. DAILY CHART OF XLK. Although the ETF has barely broken above its consolidation range, we need to see greater momentum to confirm a follow through to the upside.Chart source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.Nothing is standing in the way of XLK reaching its all-time high, but the momentum isn’t quite there yet. The 14-period relative strength index (RSI) is below 70 and looks to be stalling, pretty much in line with the overall stock market’s price action.

So, what’s the market waiting for? Maybe a catalyst, like Friday’s non-farm payrolls report. This week’s JOLTS, ADP, and ISM Services data didn’t move the needle much, but the NFP report could be the game changer.

S&P 500 Technical Forecast

Where could the S&P 500 go from here? Let’s dive into the weekly chart.

FIGURE 3. WEEKLY CHART OF THE S&P 500. The index is spitting distance to its all-time high. A break above the November high would clear the path to new highs.Chart source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.

The S&P 500 broke above its 40-week SMA on the week of May 12 and has held above it. However, it has been in a consolidation for the last month, similar to that of XLK.

The S&P 500 is approaching its November high of 6017. A break above it could push it toward new highs. On the flip side, if it slides below the 40-week SMA, it would be a cause for concern and could mean the May 12 gap-up could get filled. Keep an eye on the 5688 level. If the S&P 500 pulls back close to that level and turns around, it would be a healthy correction — an opportunity to buy the dip. A further downside move would mean exercising patience or unloading some of your positions.

What’s Going On With Gold and Bonds?

While stocks are grinding sideways, gold prices are rising, and bond prices are showing green shoots. This price action tells us that investors could be bracing for slower growth ahead. It’s not something to panic about — just something to watch.

You can get a quick look at what gold, bonds, and all the major indexes are doing by checking out the StockCharts Market Summary page and Your Dashboard.

So, what should you do?

Hold, add, or fold? That’s the big question. The market needs time to digest a lot, from economic data to geopolitical risks and policy headlines. Keep checking in and monitor the sectors, observe index performance, and note how other areas of the market, such as precious metals and bonds, are reacting.


 Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation, or without consulting a financial professional.